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‘I suppose a married woman is permitted a few liberties that would be folly in a single lady of your advancing years, Callie, my dear,’ Aunt Seraphina conceded doubtfully.
‘I will never aspire to the extremes of fashion that lead fast young matrons to damp their muslins and crop their hair, Aunt, but Sir Gideon Laughraine’s wife cannot dress like a schoolteacher.’
‘You were content to dress modestly until he arrived.’
‘I should have found the line between modest and frumpish sooner then,’ Callie said, feeling rebellious when she thought of all those long nights inventing characters and living her life vicariously so she could pretend it was enough.
‘You do seem to be longing tonight for the very life you begged me to take you away from the day he left you alone and bereft, don’t you?’ Aunt Seraphina asked, the thought of all her niece was risking by doing so clearly paining her.
‘I’m not sure,’ Callie said, but for a moment she thought her aunt’s gaze was hard when it met hers this time. She was wrong, of course she was. They couldn’t have lived and worked together all these years if her aunt secretly hated her, even though her aunt was so distant and disapproving when Callie was a child. ‘I shall always be grateful to you for standing by me when I needed you to so badly, Aunt Seraphina, but I’m a relatively young woman and can be permitted a little vanity on occasions like this,’ she teased, but Aunt Seraphina’s lips tightened and her hands clenched before she managed a polite titter and an airy gesture to deny she was a killjoy.
‘Of course, my dear, you will have to excuse an anxious old woman who wonders if you’re playing with fire.’
‘I’m hardly flaunting myself like a houri because I left a few hairpins out of my toilette tonight,’ Callie protested because she couldn’t imagine how anyone could see her plain gown and simple hairstyle as provocative.
‘I’m glad to see you looking more like yourself, but Mrs Bartle obviously takes her duties as chaperon and mentor seriously, my dear,’ Gideon said silkily.
Her lamentable wardrobe and lack of a riding horse might be behind his suspicion her aunt had not been acting in Callie’s best interests all these years. She thought of his assertion that he had sent large sums of money to her over the years and noted a bead of sweat on her aunt’s upper lip. It was very hot, perhaps even she couldn’t stay cool and composed in such weather.
‘Of course, Calliope is my niece,’ the lady said stoutly. Once it would have been a huge concession to call Callie niece, as she was the by-blow of Mrs Bartle’s younger sister. The fact she owned up to her now persuaded Callie this was all a misunderstanding.
‘Thank you, Aunt,’ she said sincerely.
‘And therefore you must want her to be happy,’ Gideon said so smoothly that Callie really didn’t know why her aunt shifted under his steady gaze, ‘must you not?’
‘Of course, which is why I never encouraged Calliope to get in touch with you,’ Aunt Seraphina countered as if it were war.
‘Or to reply to any of my letters, perhaps?’
Callie had difficulty not gasping out loud at the implication he had written more than once. A single letter would have soothed some of the jagged places in her heart, but more than one? That would have been like a bridge between the old Callie and Gideon and the new world she had no map for after he left. She eyed them both warily and wondered who was lying now.
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ Aunt Seraphina said smoothly, but Callie saw a few giveaway signs under her front of unruffled confidence that her aunt was less sure of herself than she pretended.
‘What a convenient memory you do have, ma’am,’ Gideon countered.
‘A very inconvenient one as far as you are concerned, young man. Time has not wiped out any of your past sins for me even if my niece seems to have lost her memory of them tonight. I might have kept one or two letters from Callie when we came here, but she was in no state to read your self-serving excuses for what you did at the time.’
Memory of exactly how painful that period of her life had been made Callie glare at her husband and wonder why she doubted the one person who stood by her. ‘Thank you, Aunt Seraphina. I don’t think there was any excuse for what you did either, do you, Gideon?’
He held her gaze as if he had nothing to be ashamed of and suddenly Callie felt weary half to death and wished he would simply state his business with her then go.
‘Of course there isn’t,’ her aunt answered for him.
He was about to deny it, but Kitty came in to say dinner was ready before either of them could say another word and then they only exchanged small talk. The maids were in and out with this and that and Kitty’s busy ears were always on the alert for gossip. Tonight they must be aching with the need to know more about the handsome husband Miss Sommers had brazenly owned up to as if she had never lied about him in the first place.
Somehow Callie got through the meal without blurting out something indiscreet through sheer tiredness. She felt horribly confused every time she glanced at Gideon and wondered if he was right to jolt her out of the settled life she had made without him. Maybe Aunt Seraphina had got carried away by a desire to protect Callie. If she had to walk the line between protecting a close relative or telling the strict truth, how would she cope with the dilemma her aunt faced?
The idea she would have preferred to make her own choice slipped into her mind. She had a right to know Gideon had tried to contact her or even win her back. At first she would not have listened, of course, but what about later? Maybe, she let herself know. She wasn’t quite sure if she should despise herself for being weak or add another reason not to trust Aunt Seraphina as unquestioningly as she had for too long to the list.
‘I believe we may have a thunderstorm tonight,’ her aunt announced once it was clear none of them could take another bite of whatever it was Cook had served them.
Callie had no idea what she ate while she struggled with her confusion in silence. Grandfather would be appalled by her lack of manners tonight and she wondered if either of her dining companions had noticed. The other two were probably too busy eyeing each other suspiciously to note that conversation wasn’t flowing merrily tonight.
‘Your stableman assures me the weather won’t break for another day or two. I agree it feels clammy enough to whip up a storm at any moment, though,’ Gideon said, as if trying to pretend there wasn’t an atmosphere of sticky tension in the room that was nothing to do with the summer heat. He shot a concerned look at Callie and she realised he was doing his best to stop more worries adding to her growing pile of them tonight.
‘I don’t fear thunder and lightning as I used to, Gideon,’ she said calmly enough, for if she had gone pale it was out of weariness and not her old terror of storms. After their baby, Grace, died at birth the weather was the least of her worries and since then she’d comforted so many terrified schoolgirls she could endure the worst storms without flinching.
‘I’m glad to hear it, but you do look weary, my dear. Perhaps we should all retire early to try and sleep as best we can, despite this ridiculous heat?’ he suggested.
‘Where will you sleep?’ she asked unwarily, then blushed at the impossible notion a husband might expect to share his wife’s bed.
‘Apparently there are plenty of rooms that lie empty here over the summer,’ he said as if the idea had never occurred to him.
‘I will ask Kitty to have a bed made up for you then,’ she said stiffly. She wouldn’t have welcomed him if he’d made a move to share her bed, but it felt a little bit unforgivable that he hadn’t bothered to try.
‘No need, the kitchen maid found me bed linen and we sorted it out between us. I shall be sleeping in one of the pupil-teacher’s beds tonight, since none of the younger ladies’ accommodation is big enough for a full-grown male,’ he said with a shrug that told her he understood her inner conflict about his sleeping arrangements and wondered why she thought he was so insensitive as to demand his marital rights when she was so pleased to see him she lost her senses this afternoon.
‘Then can I be rude and retire betimes, Aunt? I am very tired.’
‘Of course you must do so, my love. Little wonder you feel exhausted after such a shock as you suffered today, although I still have no idea what you were doing wandering about the countryside alone?’
It seemed a good idea to pretend she hadn’t noticed it was a question, not a statement of exasperation. Callie placed a dutiful kiss on her aunt’s expectantly raised cheek and gave Gideon a look that challenged him to demand the same. Surely he couldn’t expect her to take up marriage where they left off, even if he was willing to sleep elsewhere tonight?
‘I can’t do right for being wrong, can I?’ he whispered when he opened the door for her, then lit her a candle from the store in the hall, despite the fact it only ever seemed to get half-dark at midsummer.
‘No,’ she said as she went past him with as much dignity as she could manage. ‘Goodnight, Gideon.’
‘Goodnight, Wife,’ he murmured and the shiver that softly spoken challenge sent down her spine sped her upstairs more swiftly than her weary feet wanted to go.
* * *
Gideon wished his reluctant hostess goodnight and retired to the narrow room a girl who wasn’t rich enough to continue her education without acting as an unpaid teacher to the littlest members of this school warranted in this household. He was sure Callie tried to prepare her for life as a governess or schoolteacher as best she could, but all her aunt would care about was that she cost next to nothing.
He shivered at the thought of any daughter of his enduring such a regime at this school without Callie here to soften its hard edges. He must be very weary, because the idea of his lost child made tears stand in his eyes. They lost so much when their little Grace died before she was born. His little girl wouldn’t be so little now. Nine years old, he thought, as he stripped off the stifling correctness of summer coat, neckcloth and waistcoat. He could almost hear her furtive giggle as she peeked into her father’s room to see if he was asleep yet and might not notice if she crept downstairs now the house was settled for the night.
Perhaps she would be leading the rest of her parents’ brood astray by now, as well. Encouraging the little ones to join her illicit feast of whatever leftovers sat in the larder from dinner, or daring them to join her in the gardens by moonlight to pick strawberries and peer at a nest of kittens in the gardener’s bothy. He missed her so much tonight. Now he and her mother were under the same roof for the first time in years he felt she should be here, too. Even the slight chance of being properly married again made their daughter seem so alive he could almost hear and touch her. The one ghost he desperately wanted to see was never quite there to be marvelled at; his little girl was always just outside his field of vision, hinted at in the odd little whisper and gleeful laugh his imagination allowed him to know of her.
‘Ah, Callie, we would have loved our little angel-devil so much, wouldn’t we?’ he whispered to the still hot air and called himself a fool.
Hope was almost as bad as despair in the still silence of this sultry night. Yes, there was a slim chance he and Callie could try again, but it wouldn’t work if she carried on relying on her aunt to tell her what to think. He could force himself on his wife; take her away from here and show her how skewed her aunt’s view of him and the rest of the world was. Legally he could make her take him back into her life. It wouldn’t feel much better than enduring life without her if she didn’t want to be with him, though, and he sighed bitterly at the very idea of such a hostile and empty marriage.
Impatient with himself for wanting the whole loaf when half a one might be all he could have, he opened the window as softly as he could on to a listening sort of night. He’d learnt years ago there were far worse terrors lurking in the darkness than the suggestion of a breeze. Too on edge to undress fully, he heeled his evening shoes off and pulled back the covers on the pallet-like bed, so he could let his body rest while his mind went round in circles like a spit dog on a wheel.
* * *
‘Good morning,’ Callie greeted Gideon the next day.
She wasn’t fully awake yet, after swearing to herself she wouldn’t sleep a wink, then dropping straight into it as if she hadn’t done so for a week. Still she felt her heart flutter at the sight of him so vital and handsome as he strode into the breakfast room. Part of her had missed him every hour of every day since they parted. That Callie saw the world in richer colours now the love of her life was back in it; the rest was deeply sceptical about his return and eyed him warily.
‘Is it? I thought we might have slipped into afternoon while I was waiting for my lady to leave her chamber,’ he teased and she made a face, then took a closer look under her lashes.
‘Where on earth did you get that bruise?’ she asked, suddenly more wide-awake and able to stare right at him.
‘You might well ask.’
‘I am doing so,’ she said with a stern frown that told him she wasn’t going to be fobbed off with a rueful shrug this time.
‘I’m staying in a house I don’t know,’ he said as if that explained everything.
‘And...?’
‘And I walked into a door in the dark?’ he offered, as if he didn’t think it was a very likely story, either.
‘A door with a fist?’
‘It wasn’t a fist, it was a ewer. I suppose I should be grateful your upstairs maid didn’t have a chamber pot in her hand at the time.’
‘What on earth were you doing chasing the maids round the house in the dark?’
‘I’d as soon pursue the Gorgon with lustful intent as that sly minx, even if I was given to preying on servants,’ he said quietly and stepped over the close the door, clearly aware Kitty would listen if given the slightest excuse.
‘I heard someone creeping about the house in the small hours of the morning,’ he admitted as if he hadn’t wanted her to know.
‘Kitty might be sly and untrustworthy, but she has access to any room in the house by daylight, why would she steal about in the dark?’
‘Apparently she heard whoever was tiptoeing about and decided a housebreaker was searching the attics. I admire her courage, even if I abhor her curiosity.’
‘She left her room in the middle of the night to pursue a burglar with only a water jug? I’m not sure if that’s brave or reckless.’
‘Neither am I,’ he said with a preoccupied frown. ‘But she was a damned nuisance either way. Whoever was creeping about the house heard us and got away while Kitty was using her weapon on me.’
‘Yet it was a bright moonlit night and almost too hot to sleep, surely someone would notice a felon running from the house into the countryside?’
‘So you would think.’
‘And if they didn’t, the prowler you were both chasing must have come from inside the house,’ she said it for him, so he couldn’t pretend not to know.
‘Possibly.’
‘You have a suspect?’
‘Maybe,’ he answered even more cautiously.
She wondered if it was possible to box your husband’s ear at the same time you were making it clear he meant nothing to you. Probably not, she decided, and plumped down in her accustomed seat at the breakfast table after gathering up her breakfast more or less at random. It was an occupation and she had to eat if she wasn’t to risk another attack of the vapours.
Chapter Five
‘How odd that nobody bothered with us before you came here,’ Callie said once she had chewed a corner off a piece of toast and sipped a little of her tea to force it down.
‘Hmm, or that my arrival caused it to happen,’ he countered.
‘Why are you really here, Gideon?’ Callie asked, weary of dancing round such an urgent topic and eager to get back to real life. This whole situation felt far too dangerous to her peace of mind and she simply wanted him to go, didn’t she? ‘If you have met another woman and wish to marry her, I must disappoint you, I fear. I won’t take a lover so you can sue him for criminal conversation, then divorce me.’
‘Well, I certainly didn’t come here for that,’ he said fastidiously, as if the very idea was unthinkable and a bit offensive.
‘Then why are you here? There’s nothing to interest a man like you here.’
‘Of course there is, there’s you.’
‘No, there isn’t. I won’t be used because you suddenly find yourself in need of a wife and I’m the one you have.’
‘That’s never how it was between us and you know it, Callie.’
‘Oh, really?’ she asked scornfully. ‘So our silly little love story wasn’t a plot to put the broken parts of our families back together, after all, then? I must have imagined those furious accusations you threw at me after we got back to Raigne from our hasty flight to the Border. Miss Calliope Sommers dreamt a fine young buck carried her off to Gretna so they could wed for love. His father forbade it and her grandfathers schemed to help them elope, oh, yes, it’s obvious now—you must have been right all along, Gideon. That naive seventeen-year-old girl obviously planned every step of the journey with your furious father pursuing us to spur you on. What better way to be my Lady Laughraine one day and rule the place my illegitimate birth cut me off from? Wasn’t that how your neat story to absolve you of guilt and pile it on me went? Such a shame I didn’t know who I really was until you told me, don’t you think? Or are you still convinced I’m lying about that and wed you because Lord Laughraine’s son died without legitimate issue and he wanted his great-grandchildren to inherit everything I couldn’t lay claim to without you?’
‘No, although I don’t doubt Lord Laughraine and your other grandfather schemed to marry us to each other and tidy up two mistakes at one go. I still can’t believe they thought it a good idea,’ he said with a bitter grimace. ‘No need to remind you I’m the son of Virgil Winterley’s bastard and have no right to Raigne, but I wonder your grandfathers didn’t see what a poor bargain they were offering you.’
‘And I was such a good one? The by-blow of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and the artful young rake who refused to marry her? Don’t make me into someone I’m not, Gideon.’
‘You bear no responsibility for them, Callie. You’re a fine person in your own right and I was as deeply honoured you agreed to marry me back then as I am now,’ he said as if he didn’t regret their hasty marriage over the anvil, but how could he not?
‘Thank you, but if that’s true you should stop blaming yourself for your father’s and grandfather’s sins,’ she said with a wry smile at his false view of her as some sort of paragon she shouldn’t find flattering. ‘I’ve been told your real grandfather was nothing like his son in temper, even if your father was his spit in looks, so you must follow him. I deplored your hasty temper and love of danger, but I was never afraid of you. Even when you were in your cups I knew you would never hurt me or our child.’
She saw him flinch at the mention of their lost baby and wished she’d minded her tongue. It was too soon to revisit that sore place again, so Callie remembered Esmond Laughraine raging how he’d kill Gideon before he let them wed instead and wondered how a good man was fathered by an angry bully. Had Esmond suspected who she really was and hated the idea a future grandson of his might truly inherit Raigne? Such a bitter man might do everything he could to prevent the marriage for that very reason.
She was as puzzled by his furious opposition as Gideon at the time, but she supposed selfish jealousy could explain it. At the time she knew she wasn’t a brilliant match for the grandson of a baronet and a peer of the realm’s great-grandson, but even she knew Gideon wasn’t quite that. She recalled the love in Lady Virginia’s eyes when she talked of her late husband and knew a lady of such character and spirit could never love a man who was anything like Esmond Laughraine at heart. Her Gideon must be like his grandfather in more than looks then and shouldn’t that possessive worry a wife who expected him to leave as soon as he’d told her what he’d come for?
‘I would cut my own arm off rather than hurt you, but I managed it, didn’t I?’ Gideon said at last. He watched her lower her eyes, then stare out of the window to avoid his gaze and sighed as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘Sooner or later we must talk about it, Callie. If either of us are ever to be father or mother we can only be so together with any honour, unless you’d rather stick the carving knife in me and risk the next assizes?’
‘Don’t joke about murder,’ she snapped, shaken to her core by the very idea.
‘I think I must, Wife, or sit and howl for what you don’t want us to have.’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous and where were we with this sorry tale of loss and betrayal, and why you’re bothering me with it now?’
He sighed and poured himself a cup of coffee to wash down the breakfast he seemed to enjoy about as much as she did. ‘I admit when your maternal grandfather told me the true tale of your birth, I only saw concern for your future and the Raigne inheritance behind his plot with Lord Laughraine to set the succession straight again. I never stopped to see you had no idea who your father really was until I told you. Little wonder you didn’t defend yourself against my wild accusations when you must have been shocked to your core by the news and never mind the interpretation I put on it. Hasty boy that I was then, I felt more like a stallion put out to stud than your proud husband and lover all of a sudden and I came home and accused you of ridiculous things in the heat of temper, then made things worse by refusing to back down after I’d cooled off, even though I knew I was wrong to suspect you of being in on their plans. I never really considered how you must have felt when you found out who your father really was from a furious young idiot. It was that crack in our marriage that finally opened up and ruined everything we had wasn’t it? I ruined it all simply because I was too proud and arrogant to admit to being wrong,’ he said bleakly.
‘You were very young,’ she heard herself excuse him.
At the time it seemed inexcusable, yet it must have been agonising for the boy he had been to wonder if his wife married him to get the heir Raigne needed so badly. Sir Wendover Laughraine’s three legitimate sons were dead from fever, accident and battle by then and the current Lord Laughraine’s only child, her father, had died before she could even remember him. So why on earth had Sir Wendover still refused to admit his wife had imposed another man’s bastard on him as his youngest son? Because that bitter old man was too proud to publically admit the truth, Gideon was heir to a huge fortune and vast old house he didn’t want or believe he deserved and she was the last true Laughraine. Except she wasn’t a true one at all, was she?
‘You were even younger,’ he replied, ‘and already carrying my child so it was unforgivable to storm and rage at you like that, even if there was any truth in that tale I made up to make myself feel better. I was so afraid you didn’t love me at all, you see?’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she said with a reminiscent smile for the handsome, brooding boy he was at eighteen she hoped didn’t look as tender as if felt.
‘Because I’m not a lovable man. All my life my father cursed me as the reason he had to marry my mother. He’d call her a sanctimonious prig one moment and whore the next because she let him seduce her. Heaven knows he could be charming when he wanted to and she had a reputation for being far too proper for her own good, but she was a naive and sheltered young woman who believed him when he said he loved her. She said a lot less than him about how much she hated being trapped in a marriage neither of them wanted because I was on the way, but I doubt she could put her hand on her heart and swear she loves me even today. We meet once or twice a year now my grandfather has taken her back into the fold, but so far we haven’t managed to like each other very much.’